Leon
Trotsky: A New Step Forward
January
21, 1930
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 2, 1930, New York 1975, p. 76-78]
La
Vérité
has enlarged its format. The "cell" at Prinkipo hailed this
expansion. At the same time, La
Lutte
was converted into a monthly theoretical journal. Complementing one
another, both publications serve one and the same end. This is a
serious step forward!
In
France right now there is an abundance of quasi-communist and
ex-communist publications. One of them was frank enough to remove the
label "communist" from its name. We can only welcome this.
Labels must correspond to content not only in a pharmacy but also in
organizations. There is absolutely no reason to refer to those who
retreat to passive trade unionism in the spirit of Loriot as
communists. It is true that i?.P. calls its syndicalism
"revolutionary." But it is well enough known that the word
"revolutionary" — without basic principles, without a
program — is easy to come by, especially in France.
Le
Cri du peuple
falls into a second category. If we needed a mirror that would
reflect all the theoretical and political confusion produced by a
regime of epigones, this organ of the syndicalist opposition would be
it. This publication has the significance of a passing phase. Not
one of its participants will remain at this stage for long.
Some of them will return to a revolutionary course; then we will see
them again. Others will go all the way to "pure"
syndicalism, i.e., to bourgeois trade unionism.
It
is hardly worth mentioning the name of yet another almost-"communist"
and almost-"Oppositionist" organ which expresses nothing
and serves no one — except certain individuals with pretensions
that are also based on nothing.
Even
before La
Vérité
appeared there was no shortage of prophets who forecast its demise.
Some masterminds, trying to make something "profound" out
of their own acts of desertion, declared that generally speaking the
conditions for a communist party do not exist at the present time.
Nevertheless, La
Vérité
is not only growing and gaining strength, but it has also acquired
such a valuable ally in the struggle as La
Lutte de classes. La Vérité
itself is acquiring a clearer and more distinct appearance. One
cannot but agree with our Chinese Comrade N. who wrote not long ago
from Shanghai that the Paris La
Vérité
and the New York Militant
are the best publications of the International Left Opposition at the
present time.
Loriot,
in whom, alas, there remains nothing that is either revolutionary or
Marxist, believes that communism has no future at all. The proof? The
Opposition has made no progress in France in the last five years.
Such is the philosophy of history of a man who has lost his grip!
More
than once the proletarian vanguard, and Marxism along with it, has
gone through periods of marked decline. To many Loriots of the period
1907-10 it seemed that Bolshevism was doomed to failure. The last
half decade has been a time of atrocious mistakes by the Comintern
and defeats for the international revolution. The results affected
the left wing most severely.
We
are weak today, yes; but why? Because the German proletariat suffered
a terrible defeat in 1923; because the adventures in Bulgaria and
Estonia ended in defeat; because in 1926 the British trade unionists,
Stalin's allies, wrecked a mighty revolutionary movement of the
masses; because that same year in Poland the Communist Party played a
deplorable role; because in 1927 Chiang Kai-shek, with the help of
Stalin and Bukharin, crushed the Chinese revolution; because in a
number of other countries the proletariat suffered defeats, less
dramatic but no less profound; and because in the USSR the
bureaucracy has stifled the party. That is why the left wing is weak
today! But no matter how large the events just enumerated may loom
now, they have a transitory character. We must have the politics of
the long view.
There
has been, however, a more specific but very important reason for the
weakness of the Opposition. In a number of countries, and most of all
in France, side by side with the genuine revolutionaries, accidental
elements have joined the party, i.e., those who are tired and
disillusioned, or still worse, pretentious armchair communists who
are unfit for any kind of serious revolutionary struggle and who by
their entire conduct can only compromise the banner of the Opposition
in the eyes of the workers.
The
Russian Opposition has been represented abroad most often by these
haphazard elements who not infrequently concluded haphazard
alliances, supported haphazard publications, and helped to create
haphazard reputations. All this gave rise to a state of confusion,
which the workers had no opportunity to analyze. The individual
concoctions of one or another malcontent who had joined the
Opposition out of chance motives have been published by the official
Stalinist party press as if they were the views of the Opposition as
a whole. The official press thus consciously sustains and fosters
ideological chaos, which is the only way the present bureaucracy can
hold on.
La
Vérité
has introduced, or to put it more modestly, has
begun
to introduce, order into this chaos. During the short period of this
publication's existence, it has been fully confirmed that the Vérité
grouping is not accidental, that it is now the basic
nucleus of the Communist Left in France, and that the consolidation
of the vanguard communist elements will take place around this
grouping.
After
the strenuous efforts of the first period, the gathering of forces
will be accomplished ever more quickly. The revolutionary workers,
searching for the correct revolutionary leadership, must be convinced
through their own experience that — contrary to the lies and
slanders of the Stalinists — the Opposition will not pull them back
to syndicalism or to the right toward reformism, and that it in no
way seeks to begin history from the beginning, i.e., to build a new
party in a new place as if the war, the October Revolution, and the
rise of the Third International had never happened.
Not
only within the party, with all its numerical weakness, but also
around the party, among its sympathizers, and among the million or so
who vote for the party, there are thousands and tens of thousands of
workers who have learned a great deal, who have serious experience
behind them, and who are deeply troubled by the disastrous policies
of the Comintern leadership. They lack only the theoretical
illumination of their experience to be convinced that they hold the
same views as the Opposition. La
Vérité
hand in hand with La
Lutte de classes
will bring political clarity into their midst.